


One Wish

by Glory_Jean



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-30 01:06:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glory_Jean/pseuds/Glory_Jean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would you wish for if you could have anything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Wish

**Author's Note:**

> Shippy post WOM Rose/Doctor fix-it fic. If you're sick of fix-it's turn back now. Quote from the song _Be The One_ by The Fray. I hadn't planned to post this, but my angsty muse had other plans.
> 
> Post WOM. Spoiler warnings for End of Time One and Two. Based on some spoilerly set photos
> 
> unbeta'd. Sorry for any Britpick!fail. Thanks to [](http://ladyofgallifrey.livejournal.com/profile)[**ladyofgallifrey**](http://ladyofgallifrey.livejournal.com/) and [](http://achuislemochroi.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://achuislemochroi.livejournal.com/)**achuislemochroi** for the read-throughs. I hope you like what I've done with this.

 

_What if I knew how to yell_  
_What would I pray_  
_What if I knew how to tell_  
_What would I say_

_I will be the only one_  
_If you say you’ll never go_  
_I'll be screaming out your name_  
_From the back row_

 

So this was it then. He had finally lost. The burn of regeneration tingled under his skin. He fought it, knowing he was risking a more permanent death as he did.

Soon he would be another man. He would be Rose's Doctor no longer. So he stood here on a street in a past time. A time before killer Christmas trees, before she had touched time, or knew that wars could be fought underground while the city above saw only it's fringes.

He would look upon her one last time with _these_ eyes.

Easing around the corner he watched as a young Rose walked with her mother through the snow. Her cheeks were pink with the cold and she was so alive. Longing seized him with unexpected strength. How had he let everything go so wrong? While he was busy withholding second chances, he had carelessly squandered his own. Fitting really.

They were nearly past him now. Once they were gone, he would return to the TARDIS and finish this life. Abruptly, a stab of pain cut across his mid section and he gasped. He stumbled against the wall.

"Are you all right there?"

His head snapped up to see Rose looking at him with concern.

"I'm — I'm f — ," he struggled with the syllables, his mouth feeling strange and numb.

She began to move towards him then but Jackie caught her arm.

"Stay back from him, Rose. He's drunk maybe. Or a nutter."

"Mum!" Rose shook Jackie's hand off. "He's sick or something. He needs help." She took a couple of hesitant steps towards him. "Do you need me to call someone? Do you need a doctor?"

A gasping laugh escaped him. "Rose," he whispered. His Rose, always his rescuer. Then the world seemed to tilt and swim in front of his eyes and he fell hard to the ground in front of her.

She dropped to the ground beside him. "Mum, call someone now!"

"No, Rose," he protested. "Don't worry about me. I'm always all right."

"You don't look all right." She slid her hands under his shoulders and cradled his head on her lap. "What's wrong with you? How do you know my name? Do I know you? Who... are...." Her words faltered as her eyes glazed over.

"Rose?" He struggled to sit up as she become immobile, kneeling there in the snow.

Then her eyes changed, becoming aware in way that didn't fit this Rose and her whole posture changed. She seemed to age before his eyes: the young girl in front of him reminding him of someone he had walked away from so long ago. He was certain he saw a glint of gold in her eyes.

"Doctor?"

 _What_?! His mind railed.

"Oh, Doctor," she sighed. "What have you done?"

 _What? What_?! He cried out internally as his voice seemed to have deserted him.

"You have made some dodgy decisions in the past, but this is not like you. And now your life is ending. You would risk your life for one last glimpse." She looked at him with infinite sadness.

"Rose, it's impossible for you know these things."

"' _All that was, all that is, all that could be_.'" She sighed with mock impatience. "Doctor, for a self proclaimed genus, you don't listen very well."

Stung, he tried to protest her accusation, but she quelled him with a stern look.

"What did I just say?"

He shut his eyes and nodded.

"So listen now - 'I take the words - a message to lead myself _here.'_ Here is not a time or place. 'Here' is wherever you need me."

"Oh, Rose." Hope burned tightly in his chest. "Is that really you? How can it be? You haven't... we haven't —"

 _You're going to burn,_ he thought.

Her mouth tipped into a smile as she answered his unvoiced thought. "Yes, but not yet. You'll fix it, yeah?" Then she sobered. "You lost faith." The sadness in her voice was like an ache in his bones. "You lost hope."

"I don't know what you mean."

"No?"

 _If I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her_. The words rang in his head as if he had said them only moments ago.

"You've been harming the timelines. This is not you." Her hand was gentle as it stroked though his hair, her voice hypnotically soft in its censure. "I've rewritten the timelines so many times for you. Untangled the knots, rescued the lost strands. Your distant past. Our futures. You're an awful lot of work. You may have given up on me, but I will _never_ give up on you." Her voice dropped to a fierce, almost feral growl at the end.

"I would never."

"Oh? Where am I now?"

"With me."

"Am I?"

"Yes. No. I —" His voice caught and he tried again. "I —" The words would not come.

"If you could have one wish, just one wish, what would it be?"

For a moment, her unexpected question confused him. Then an idea formed in the back of his mind.

"Anything?" he murmured, weakly.

Oh, he wanted so much to believe. So much. He wanted to let go. To sink into the comfort of her embrace and never move again. Heaven.

"Anything."

 _Anything_. What he could do with anything. He'd been offered the universe before. The chance to shape and mold. He'd turned it down then. Later, he'd tried to take that power.... But he didn't want to make the universe bend to his will. He didn't want to be a god. He wanted.... Oh, he _wanted_....

"Don't let go," he whispered urgently. "Oh, Rose," he begged, with visions of white rooms in his head and tears in his voice, "please, don't let go."

"Your wish is my command. Just be careful what you wish for." Her eyes crinkled as he recognized his own words.

Then her eyes began to glow with the light of time and she took on the look of the goddess she had been only just concealing.

"Rose —" he protested in panic.

"Shhhhh."

Then he was caught by a flutter in his mind. It hovered momentarily like a butterfly over a flower, then it split and blossomed into a sudden assault on his Time Lord senses. He could almost visualize the universe splitting at the seams and being resown into a new shape. A violent shift in the Timelines rippled across his mind with something akin to pain. The throes of a reality being born.

 

***

Rose stood sobbing in front of him. Her feet were planted firmly on the unyielding TARDIS grating while her heart was being left behind in the image of a cold, lonely beach as she wished her mother one last farewell. He cursed his own selfishness. It was wrong to keep her from her family. He should have made her go back but he was a coward. Afraid to go on without this young girl at his side.

He was never very good at this happy ending stuff.

***

He looked out the window, gazing upon the moonscape and thought wistfully of his TARDIS left behind on Earth and its surely worried occupant. Some part of him was fiercely glad she'd missed catching this ride. He'd make it up her. They could visit the moon any old time. She would look lovely in the Earthlight. He smiled at the image then whipped around to face the inquisitive women behind him.

"Well then, Martha Jones..."

 

***

The trip to New York had been an apology to both his lovely companions. To Martha, for letting her be kidnapped and Rose for abandoning her with Brannigan and his family to worry over him while he played at action hero, jumping from vehicle to vehicle. He was so sorry Rose's lovely memories of New Earth had been tainted once more by death. He'd only wanted another try at visiting New New York. It had seemed a nice, safe place to take a temporary traveler.

Who knew the adventure in the original New York would end up with them rescuing a transformed Dalek Sec and a new race of almost-Time Lords? The universe was indeed a strange place. What was he to do about his new "people"?

***

The Doctor thought his hearts would stop when Rose shrieked and ran outside to enthusiastically hug his biggest secret (in this body anyway). He had finally come face to face with the conflicting pulls of friendship, his time senses and, dare he say it, Time Lord bigotry. That was not one of his better days.

***

When Martha finally left, her tenure not so temporary after all, confiding to Rose that she secretly fancied the Doctor and how wrong that felt, considering, things were strangely quiet for a time.

At least it _was_ quiet until a certain ginger temp barged back into their lives. From then on, things got a lot more interesting.


End file.
